Big data reveals trend of Chinese auto market

BEIJING -- Many cars at the ongoing Beijing auto show can momentarily seize the attention of visitors, but such scenes can hardly tell what sorts of automobile are customers' favorites.

A new report based on big-data technology, however, discloses some clues in the world's largest auto market.

Prior to the opening of the auto show, Baidu, a leading Chinese search engine, issued a report on the features and demands of Chinese car buyers, by analyzing massive search data in the past year generated by the country's 600-million-plus Internet users.

The report has been upgrading with a real-time feed of search inquiries related to the show, which kicked off on April 21 and will conclude on April 29.

One finding may get foreign investors excited is that the number of search queries for "imported cars" increases slightly year on year, up to 26.1 percent, though domestic automobiles still dominate the current Chinese vehicle market.

According to real-time results generated by Baidu Index, searchers of imported cars are mainly young people under 30 years old.

Another surprising finding shows that 42.6 percent of web users searching cars come from the fourth-tier, or very small cities, and the number is almost three times that from first-tier cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which have rolled out car-purchase restriction policies to tackle traffic congestion and air pollution.

Price-sensitive Chinese consumers are beginning to pay more attention to car's comfort and functions, as more than 50 percent of search queries are related to SUVs or compact cars, according to the report.

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